Tornado: 1, WM's school: 0

[Minister of Truth]

that was awesome. WM is too smart to live in the south. move out young man, move out. i know you listened to my advice and then decided against it, that is fine, but go somewhere smart. you're a good guy, despite all your flaws.

WM is a homegrown carpetbagger.

 

[Mott the Hoople]

I've been less than a mile from a tornado some 7 times. One my father and I watched form almost directly above our heads while sitting out on his porch. Another we watched and were ready to go to my friend's basement if it came any closer... One I spoke about on this board, I ran to get my camera to take a picture of it but the tornado broke up before I could get the shot...

Mother nature is awesome, respect must be paid, but it still is an awesome thing. I love strong weather phenomena. I used to have to go down to New Orleans to spend time with my grandmother who would refuse to leave during hurricanes... Fortunately, and unfortunately, she had passed by the time Katrina came around.

I watched one go through my front yard when I was 11. It took down a very large Maple Tree. Fortunately we were living on a farm back then and had a very large front yard but it was still about 50 yards from our house. The second one was when I was about 15. We were living on the third floor of an apartment building then. A friend and I watched a funnel cloud pass through the ravine behind our apartment complex, had it been level there instead of a steep ravine it would have been a tornado. The third time was when I was working in Arkansas. My boss and I were heading out of the steel plant we were working on to drop some samples off at the post office. As we were about halfway out of the plant we heard the sirens go off, as we rounded the north side of the plant and headed towards the exit gate we saw the tornado coming straight at the gate. My boss stopped the car and we both jumped out and ran into the brick gaurd house. By the time I got out of the car and dove into the gaurd house( about 5 yards since I was on the passenger side) I was literally soacked through to the skin. The tornado passed about 10 yards to the north of the gaurd shack, it blew both the doors open and blew out all the contents in the guard shack that wasn't nailed down. My boss and I were holding on to a steel pole under the desk that was it's support. The wind was so hard it literally picked my body up and I would have been blown out the shack had I not been holding onto that pole. Thank god it was a solidly constructed brick guard shack. The tornado actually hit a tractor trailer with two 10 ton steel coils loaded on it and knocked it over. Amazingly the driver who was inside the truck was unhurt. The Tornado, amazingly, then took a turn to the north and completely missed the steel plant, though it moved around quite a few steel coils in the storage yard (think 10 to 20 tons each!)......Thank God it was just a class one tornado, if it had been a larger one I wouldn't be here typing this. In all not a single person was hurt and it all happened in less time than it takes to read this paragraph...I literally didn't even have time to be scared.